


Rewrite the Stars

by ohemgeeitscoley



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alderaanian Hair Braiding (Star Wars), Aliens, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hair Braiding, Star-crossed, longing stares and hand touches, star-crossed lovers, the star-crossed AU exactly one person asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28471860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohemgeeitscoley/pseuds/ohemgeeitscoley
Summary: Rey is eight years old when the Alderaan aliens come crashing down to Jakku. She meets him then, a little boy with blue markings on his face and braids in his hair. She wants to protect him, but he's pulled away from her too soon.It's ten years later when the government says that a small group of the Alderaans will be attending her high school as a test to integrate them into society.Rey can only hope that he's one of them.(Or a very loose Star-Crossed AU)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Rewrite the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andyouweremine (always_a_queen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_queen/gifts).



> Very fun fact, back when only one person on this planet knew I was a Reylo and told me to go for writing something for them, she asked for a Star-Crossed AU. This was the first story I started. These are my first Reylo words I ever wrote. I realized the other day I was 2,000 words away from having 100k of Reylo fic posted in 2020. It seemed fitting to post these first words to meet this goal and throw this story out to the world.
> 
> As always, biggest shout to Andyouweremine for dragging me down with you on this rabbit hole, for never judging my ships, for loving Matt Lanter and talking about Star-Crossed with me YEARS after it was cancelled and being like YES PLEASE write me the Reylo AU. You get at least 50% of the credit. I love you <3 
> 
> I hope if you read this, you enjoy it. I'm going to have the best time writing it. I already know. Chapter count is a guess. We'll see how it goes.

Rey isn't supposed to turn the TV on when Plutt leaves her alone to man the front desk. But she's eight and bored and no one ever really comes out at that time of day anyway. So she turns it on because Plutt won't be back for hours and she has nothing else to do. The images that come into view once the fuzziness of the signal fades away aren't why she's expecting. At first she thinks the images on the screen are from a movie, the foggy field outside of the city, one Rey recognizes from her bus route to school. There is a silver metal ship that seems otherworldly sticking out from the ground that doesn't belong. But there's a banner running along the bottom off the screen that reads BREAKING NEWS: UNIDENTIFIED SHIP CRASHES INTO JAKKU.

And then she hears it, the low hum of a helicopter too close.

She knows she should turn off the TV and go about her day. That she should be counting the incoming inventory that Plutt had told her to go through if she wanted dinner.

Instead, she opens the door and steps outside to see what is going on because Rey had never learned to shy away from what scares her. 

Between the bright lights, the sirens and the honest-to-God spaceship falling from the sky, Rey is pretty secure in her feelings of being scared. 

So she runs.

Out past Plutt's seemingly never ending rows of junk cars that people have traded for pennies or that were just abandoned with nowhere else to go. She runs to the wired fence, that despite all of the warning signs, does not hum with the current of electricity. 

She runs until she is at the small, broken down building that is mostly covered by overgrown trees and fallen branches. There's more branches on the building than the last time she'd been out there, which had only been a few weeks prior. She flinches as another loud bang shatters throughout the sky. She scrambles to find the door, pushing away the leaves until she is able to step in and close the door.

It takes her eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness of the room, the only window still covered by a sheet from whomever stayed there before. Cardboard boxes were stacked one on top of the other dividing the room. 

Rey had been six when she first discovered the building, back when she still waited for her parents to find her. When she still believed that they cared enough to look for her. She was constantly running back to the woods where she had been found. 

She doesn't remember how long she spent amongst the trees before she was found. She's not really sure that she wants to remember. Not now, but then, she constantly ran from Plutt's and into the woods. An unspoken wish always on her lips. 

The building became her sanctuary. A place of her own in a world where she wasn't afforded such luxury. 

The Earth seems to shatter with another loud bang, pulling Rey back from her memories.

"One," she whispers, her voice barely audible to her own ears with the loudness of the outside chaos.

"Two," she continues, wrapping her arms around herself as she sits down on the wooden floor of the building. 

That's when she realizes she isn't alone, a voice too low to be her own whimpers from behind one stack of cardboard boxes. Rey bites down on the inside of bottom lip, debating if she should run.

But this is her safe place and as another whimper fills the air Rey realizes that the person sounds more hurt than anything. 

She stands carefully, walking around the cardboard box with a confidence that is all for show. Her breath stutters as she sees the boy curled around himself on the ground. His legs are too long for his arms to fit around, but he's clearly desperately trying to make himself as small as possible. His head doesn't rise from where he has it buried near his knees. 

His hair is dark and long, even with half of it braided around his head, the parts that aren’t pulled into the braid reach his shoulders. 

"Are you," Rey starts, her voice soft as she takes another step toward him, "are you okay?"

The boy sobs again, louder this time, but he doesn't answer her question. 

Rey kneels down next to him, resting her legs on the ground before reaching her hand out to touch his leg. 

He jerks his head up, his eyes wide as he stares at her.

He looks like nothing Rey has ever seen in the eight years she's been alive. His eyes are wide and brown. He has a blue tattoo that goes across his eyebrow and eye all the way down to his neck. There are smaller, thinner spirals on the other side of his face, close to his ears. She thinks there might be more down the side of his neck, but he turns his head back down, blocking her view as he looks away from her.

"It's okay," Rey says quietly, finding his hand and taking it her own. "I'm Rey," she adds when he squeezes her hand. "What's your name?"

He looks up at her again, no answering, but looking down at their hands, his eyebrows knitting together before he looks back up at her.

There's a cut that she can see running down his left arm and a dry liquid that she knows should be blood but that doesn't look like blood on his arm. 

"You're hurt," she points out, looking around the room for something to use to clean away the mess. There's nothing around them that she can use and even if there was something it would be dirty and full of dust. She lets go of his hand, pulling her shirt over her head, leaving her in a tank top that had been too small for her last summer. 

She presses the cloth down on the cut, taking her hand back in his when he hisses at the pressure. "I know, I know it hurts. I'm sorry." 

She keeps trying to clean at the cut, unsure of what exactly she is supposed to do, but she manages to wipe away most of the substance, and she's pretty sure the cut itself is closed.

She throws the shirt behind her, focusing again on the boy. He's crying. Rey can't think of the last time she saw a boy cry. All of the boys in her class had long grown too old, too strong, too full of what society tells them to be, to cry in front of girls. 

She raises her hand to wipe away his tears. "You're okay," she repeats. "I'll stay with you. You won't be alone, okay?"

Rey knows what it's like to be alone. She knows all too well what it's like in these woods with no one looking for you. 

She shifts forward, her knees protesting her weight pressing them against the hard floor and the awkward angle she sat down at. She wriggles around until she's sitting next to him, her hand still in his. 

He doesn't say anything. He stares at her, blinking slowly, but he never says anything. The only thing he does is squeeze her hand tighter every time there's another loud explosion outside.

Rey isn't sure how long she's been there, but she's hungry. She can feel her stomach rumble more than she can hear it. Food isn't something that is always guaranteed for her at Plutt's so she'd long ago learned to save whatever she didn't need to eat at school and storing it in the building.

She tries to let go of his hand so she can grab the coffee can by the door, the one with the small bags of gummies, granola bars and small crackers shaped like fish, but he holds on tighter, a look of panic spreading across his face.

Rey wonders if that is what she had looked like when they found her hiding after her parents left her. Scared and alone and desperate for anyone to stay with her.

“Food,” she tells him, pulling away her hand from his. “I have food in here. I’ll be right back.”

He watches her as she walks away, moving around so that he can see her when she is on the other side of the boxes. 

Rey grabs the can and walks back to the boy, sitting crossed legged on the ground next to him. She opens the lid, grabbing the chocolate chip granola bar that is at the bottom of the can. She tears at the wrapper, and breaks the bar in half. 

“Here.” Rey hands him half of the bar. “Eat.”

He takes the bar from her, staring down at it. Rey lifts her bar to her mouth, taking a small bite. She smiles at him when he mimics her movement. 

“Yeah, just like that,” she tells him, taking another bite.

She falls asleep at some point, her head resting on top of his, which is on her shoulder. He still hasn’t said anything and Rey is starting to think that maybe he doesn’t know how, but he seems to understand her. He seems to trust her. 

His hand is still in hers.

The soldiers are loud when they break down the door. Their steps heavy and in time as they push down the boxes and take him from her. 

She yells and screams, kicking at the masked man holding her, reaching her hand out for his. But it's no use. They take him from her and return her to Plutt’s after spending hours asking her questions that she pretends to be too young to understand. 

She returns to the forest, to the building that time keeps beating down, and waits for him to return.

He never does.

\-------------

Rey isn’t sure why she keeps returning to the building in the woods as if he’s going to magically greet her one day. She knows that he is one of the Alderaan aliens. She puts together the blue lines on his face when she’s 10 and the school starts telling the students more about the mysterious ship and the blocked off sector that began to develop around it. 

She never tells anyone about him. Always afraid that if she does they’ll come for her again, to ask her the same questions as they did before— _did he hurt you? did he touch you? why were you out in the woods anyway? he was bleeding did you touch the blood? did he say anything to you?_ —only this time she wouldn’t be able to hide behind being a child to not answer the questions.

It’s been ten years. 

Ten years and Rey can still remember everything about that day with such clarity that sometimes Rey worries that she made it all up. That the little Alderaanian boy that she met in the woods and whose hand she held is nothing more than the creation of an overactive imagination of a child that was too close and alone to an event that changed the world.

Today is the day. The day that has been discussed and discussed and _discussed_ non stop since the governor announced her plans to allow a group of Alderaan aliens to attend high school. No gates. No barbed wire. Nothing to divide them from the rest of the school. 

Rey knew that the chances of seeing him again were next to nothing. And yet, she couldn't keep the small flutter of hope inside of her chest down. 

It's obvious when they arrive on the school grounds. There's a collective silence that falls over the hallways that is completely uncommon in a building full of teenagers. Rey turns around from her locker and looks toward the main doors to the school. Breathe, she reminds herself, trying to remind herself that there was a chance that he wouldn't be there. 

And even if he is one of the Alderaans selected to attend the school, there's no reason for her to believe that he would remember her.

Meeting him was a life changing event for Rey, but she knows better than to think that maybe it was the same for him. If her life has taught her anything, it was to keep her hopes to a minimum. She knows better than to expect too much.

But that isn't enough to keep the hope from bubbling up in her stomach when the doors open and the small gasps start spreading down the rows of people watching them walk in. 

Rey holds her breath as she starts to make out the group of five walking down the hall.

She thinks that maybe even if he is one of the five there was still a chance she wouldn't recognize him.

Ten years is a long time.

She releases her breath slowly when they are finally close enough for her to focus on their features.

He's there.

He's taller, obviously. But even amongst the other Alderaans he stands above them. His eyes are the same shade of brown that she's dreamed about almost every night since they met, but there is a darkness to them that wasn't there before. His hair is still long and styled with the same braids.

The blue marking across his eye seems brighter, harder to miss.

Rey blinks, pinching her wrist, half expecting that when she opens her eyes again, he'll be gone and a stranger will be in his place. This all being a trick of her imagination seems more likely than the tiny alien boy she tried so hard to protect to be one of the few selected to go to the same school as her.

But when she opens her eyes, he's still there and he's looking at her.

When her eyes meet his, there is no denying the electricity that seems to spread down her spine.

It is _him_. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi to me on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/ohemgeeitscoley)


End file.
